Dont think you should look at how haste would be if it effect bleeds now tho, not hard for them to buff mastery/crit or whatever if they would going to make such a change. I do think they should so somting with haste tho because it does feel kinda of a boring stat if you dont have alot of it. If bleeds wont snapshot with anything it would even be posible to make bleeds last shorter but do more damage with haste, would fix targetswithing a tiny bit to

baver wrote:Dont think you should look at how haste would be if it effect bleeds now tho, not hard for them to buff mastery/crit or whatever if they would going to make such a change. I do think they should so somting with haste tho because it does feel kinda of a boring stat if you dont have alot of it. If bleeds wont snapshot with anything it would even be posible to make bleeds last shorter but do more damage with haste, would fix targetswithing a tiny bit to

teddabear wrote:It seems unlikely Haste would overtake Mastery, unequipping Rune I show Mastery is 50% higher than Haste. Even if it did I would be ok with that since Feral would get a much more equitable benefit from Heroism. Also as was pointed out there will be no reforging so it would be nice to have 2 good secondary stats like most classes instead of just 1.

We do have 2 good secondary stats, mastery and crit. Haste isn't even useless, it's a just a bit behind, and it will be far better when they take snapshotting out. You're blowing this way out of proportion.

I don't think they are useless but they are certainly proportionately less useful than many other specs get.

I don't see how removing snapshotting makes haste better unless you mean everything else will get worse.

In any event if they are doing a complete overhaul I don't see any reason to be opposed to haste effecting Feral dots. Are there any specs left that don't hasted dots now besides Feral. It certainly has done wonders for the scaling of specs that received it.

Yes, that's what I mean. Mastery is only such ridiculously ahead of haste because of snapshotting and skillful play, the gap would be much much smaller without it. In fact, mastery's value relative to haste has gone up in the sims throughout the expansion not because of increasing item levels, but because of smarter action lists that are better at maximizing bleed damage.

These are all very interesting changes. I'm hoping that the removal of snapshotting will bring us some more direct damage ability. I believe we have gone too far to the DoT end of the scale of DD <--> DoT. One of the biggest weaknesses I see in my game is on fights with mid-level monsters - those mobs that are not bosses, but are also not aoe trash. I don't deny that we are the best single target dps class, but those targets have to live for awhile for that to shine through. And honestly, there haven't been very many fights in this xpac that allow us to stay on the boss and just nuke the **** out of him. More DD will give us more damage dealing utility, and that can't be bad.

For me, WOTLK was the best time I've had as a feral. That's when I felt like I could really separate myself from the average feral through exceptional play. With snapshotting, it feels like there is way too much RNG involved to be consistently great on the damage end. I really liked where your max damage came from keeping as close to 100% uptime on SR/rip/rake as possible while doing the on the fly calculations for squeezing in ferocious bites.

I will be very happy to see snapshotting gone. What I really don't like, is the removal of reforging unless they have some major design tweaks coming to the class. If we carry on in to the next expansion with the same disparity we currently have between secondary stats, there's going to be a "best in slot" piece for every slot and we will see many more pieces of gear rotting as everybody wants the same things. I really like playing around with my gear, and I think with hit/expertise gone it makes reforging that much more desirable to be in the game. Gone will be the days of having to reforge after every new piece for most classes to maintain their hit/exp caps. I really enjoy gear differences because it makes theorycrafting much more interesting.

One of the things I would really like to see for feral is some form of a redirect like rogues have, or something like the soul swap we get from symbiosis as a baseline. Target swapping still doesn't seem to be well addressed at this point, and maybe it's just early in the game, or once again it will be ignored. It's horribly frustrating in fights like Galakras, Nazgrim, and Spoils to be reaching the 5 cp area as a mob is about to die and you can either use a greatly unneeded FB or refresh a SR that is already at a high duration. Chi is not necessarily a better mechanic than combo points, but I do really like how it allows for a build up that can be released in a burst on new targets, something somewhat enviable. Maybe an ability that would allow you to absorb your combo points back for energy (something like 20 energy per cp with a ghost energy bar allowing you to go up over the 100 energy cap) would be something that allowed us to target swap more reliably.

If the fight mechanics stay a lot like what they are now (target swapping, add phases) I don't feel we're in a great spot.

I've always felt Blizzard keeps increasing RNG to obscure class differences in DPS. However in my opinion it is RPPM not snapshotting that sucks. I think snapshotting is the most interesting aspect of the game, it's just a major pain to do it with RPPM trinkets and a combo point spec.

teddabear wrote:I've always felt Blizzard keeps increasing RNG to obscure class differences in DPS. However in my opinion it is RPPM not snapshotting that sucks. I think snapshotting is the most interesting aspect of the game, it's just a major pain to do it with RPPM trinkets and a combo point spec.

But the only reason RPPM is bothering you is because you rely solely on snapshotting to minmax your dps. That's what they're trying to fix.

Neonjoe wrote:For me, WOTLK was the best time I've had as a feral. That's when I felt like I could really separate myself from the average feral through exceptional play. With snapshotting, it feels like there is way too much RNG involved to be consistently great on the damage end. I really liked where your max damage came from keeping as close to 100% uptime on SR/rip/rake as possible while doing the on the fly calculations for squeezing in ferocious bites.

I will be very happy to see snapshotting gone. What I really don't like, is the removal of reforging unless they have some major design tweaks coming to the class. If we carry on in to the next expansion with the same disparity we currently have between secondary stats, there's going to be a "best in slot" piece for every slot and we will see many more pieces of gear rotting as everybody wants the same things. I really like playing around with my gear, and I think with hit/expertise gone it makes reforging that much more desirable to be in the game. Gone will be the days of having to reforge after every new piece for most classes to maintain their hit/exp caps. I really enjoy gear differences because it makes theorycrafting much more interesting.

One of the things I would really like to see for feral is some form of a redirect like rogues have, or something like the soul swap we get from symbiosis as a baseline. Target swapping still doesn't seem to be well addressed at this point, and maybe it's just early in the game, or once again it will be ignored. It's horribly frustrating in fights like Galakras, Nazgrim, and Spoils to be reaching the 5 cp area as a mob is about to die and you can either use a greatly unneeded FB or refresh a SR that is already at a high duration. Chi is not necessarily a better mechanic than combo points, but I do really like how it allows for a build up that can be released in a burst on new targets, something somewhat enviable. Maybe an ability that would allow you to absorb your combo points back for energy (something like 20 energy per cp with a ghost energy bar allowing you to go up over the 100 energy cap) would be something that allowed us to target swap more reliably.

If the fight mechanics stay a lot like what they are now (target swapping, add phases) I don't feel we're in a great spot.

WotLK was actually the expansion where we relied more on gear than on anything else - or, more specifically, we relied on Armor Penetration! Capping ArP @ 100% had a much larger impact on physical dps than anything else, so Ferals, rogues, warriors, blood DK's and hunters had "good times" = at the top of dps meters, all because of this totally broken stat.

The reason I didn't like it was precisely because it didn't require amasing skills to do high dps - it mostly required dkp hoarding or luck to get the right trinkets! And I even got them, even on my alts (I had 6 ArP trinkets on 3 chars - so I was incredibly lucky), but the concept was still meh. I would much have preferred that energy regen through Haste had been buffed, so I could use my attacks more often and have less downtime when energy starved, but that never happened.

I really hope they remove the dot snapshotting - keep in mind that it will only be removed from stats, not from a TF- or DoC-buffed Rake/Rip. It will make the spec much more intuitive and it will force Blizzard to balance us around something else, hopefully making our dps more consistent and less dependent on RNG effects from trinkets and weapon enchant procs. What I really hope for is more front-loading damage, instead of relying so much on our bleeds. Right now, our Mangle/Shred is below Rip, auto-attacks, Rake and Thrash! It makes it very difficult to do bursts and we're already extremely back-loaded because of Savage Roar. It just feels counter-intuitive and underpowered to fire off 40 energy and then hit like a wet noodle - or 50 energy on FB and hit for less than 5% of the target's HP.

I agree completely on the need for some kind of mechanic to make target-swapping easier. That's what they should have implemented, instead of Symbiosis. I do believe that the new talent for having Moonfire apply a combo point is a shot at a solution - but that's a lot of potential to use for such a limited need and at the same time, it should be baseline for all Druid specs (all Druid specs are HoT/DoT based and so fast target-switching is a liability to all four specs). I hope that Blizzard changes combo points to be allocated on us instead of the target, just like charges are allocated to monks/paladins. It would mean that rogues would be changed as well (as well as some rogue abilities), but it would be more intuitive and it would make the passive Savage Roar talent more worth it.

Neonjoe wrote:For me, WOTLK was the best time I've had as a feral. That's when I felt like I could really separate myself from the average feral through exceptional play. With snapshotting, it feels like there is way too much RNG involved to be consistently great on the damage end. I really liked where your max damage came from keeping as close to 100% uptime on SR/rip/rake as possible while doing the on the fly calculations for squeezing in ferocious bites.

WotLK was also RNG b/c it had a lot to do with crits. If you got an unlucky (RNG) string, that FB you tried to weave in was very detrimental to your overall damage. You can't really say that the unluckiness made that person a bad player. RPPM actually makes you more aware of your current situation. It is, in my opinion, a much better way of separating the top end players.

Another thing to keep in mind is they're doubling the number of secondary stats relevant to us (and adding tertiary stats, but since these are supposed to be "rare" bonuses I'm not worrying about them too much yet).

SecondariesX% Amplify means: +X% Crit Damage/Healing Multiplier and Multistrike Damage/Healing Multiplier, and +X% more Haste/Mastery/Readiness/Spirit/Armor from gear.Multistrike is split into two (X/2)% chances, so that you can occasionally get a triple-hit (fun!), and the cap is 200%, not 100%. It also functions like Elemental Mastery (ie a new damage event of the same spell with its own chance to crit as opposed to simply being 30% of the original damage event)X% Readiness increases the cooldown recovery rate (aka, divides the cooldown by (1+Readiness)) of *some* class abilities. The number of abilities affected by Readiness will vary by spec (will be listed in spellbook, like Mastery). Coefficient likely to vary too. Also not necessarily the same ones as the SoO trinkets and not necessarily 6 abilities per class.

I'd expect all the tertiary stats to be fairly mild in value/effect since you're not expected to 'stack' them.

I'm not sure I like their current plan for amplify. Wouldn't it be crap early on and become the best stat later? Maybe its not as bad as I think since it does take the place of another secondary on gear so you're trading X amount of secondary for +X% other secondaries so it does have diminishing returns (ie you wouldn't want every slot to have amplify).

ShmooDude wrote:Maybe its not as bad as I think since it does take the place of another secondary on gear so you're trading X amount of secondary for +X% other secondaries so it does have diminishing returns (ie you wouldn't want every slot to have amplify).

Bah, sounds like the haste vs mastery sliding value issue Elemental has has for two expansions now, only for everyone. /shudder

I'm just worried about the havoc the combination of the two main features could cause (namely secondary+tertiary stats and no more reforge s): If the tertiary stats are indeed random and if secondary stats cannot be reforged (you'll be thus hunting for 1 item out of 4-5 viable) then it's possible that their goal of not requiring people to use addons (like Catus, AMR) might backfire since then no two people would have equal stat distribution on their items (even ones with the same name) and it might end up in a Sim-per-upgrade scenario like we have for Rune with Catus now.

I just can't convince myself to believe that they're (capable of) overhauling all specs to such an extent that not being able to fix random secondaries/tertiaries from random loot drops (and 1.00001x per week at that) might be considered viable and fun whether you're "lucky" or "unlucky". We already have a lot of rage going on about RPPM procs, warforged drops, no loot from coins... Imagine one spec having mastery valued 2x over other secondaries. You always get haste drops. GG?

On top of that, people might not actually know the value of upgrades (ie. for rolling/loot council) because of the vast randomness of stats and being unable to look up BIS gear lists.

Not sure why this keeps coming up, or where the impression came from but secondary stats are NOT RANDOM. All secondary stats on gear will be fixed. The tertiary stats, "war forged", and gem sockets are the only random elements of gear.

Since many pieces of gear can be shared in WoD, the loot tables will effectively be very large. While I think the removal of reforging is a mistake, expanded tables will probably allow ideal Secondary1/Secondary2 gear to exist for all slots. While it's impossible to value tertiary/sockets until we know more, it will be interesting to see if the presence of +Speed/Socket/Forged w/poor stats can beat a normal item with ideal stats.

Tinderhoof wrote:Not sure why this keeps coming up, or where the impression came from but secondary stats are NOT RANDOM. All secondary stats on gear will be fixed. The tertiary stats, "war forged", and gem sockets are the only random elements of gear.

The randomness I was implied is connected to loot drop randomness and the fact that you can no longer reforge. Since no one will realistically be exposed to several drops from the entire loot table it is a safe assumption that some people will be stuck with random items that are sub-optimal and they do not want (to clarify: items with fixed stats).

How is this any different from what WoW has been since the start? I can only think of Tier 9 and Tier 10 that we had Tier gear available for Justice (or what ever it was per tier then). Sure reforging helped some, but everyone still has chances of being stuck with a sucky piece they don't want. Hell I was stuck with the darkmoon trinket all the way to ToT and reforging couldn't help that.

One hopes that they make the gear more consistently usable between Rogue/Druid so that the stats are balanced. In the era of reforge, they didn't really care what the stats were, now did we, unless we got 8 items with hit on them. They are going to have to be more thoughtful on what stats they put on the gear.

I actually hope that isn't the case. Already having to fight Rogues and Monks for Leather plus Rogues, Hunters, Monks, Shaman, Guardians for necks, rings, cloaks having same stats be good for everyone just makes everyone fight over the same pieces and ignore others. I would much rather see some diversity so there is some more even loot distribution.

Ayleena wrote:They are going to have to be more thoughtful on what stats they put on the gear.

Tinderhoof wrote:makes everyone fight over the same pieces and ignore others.

Agreed, this is why I think many players -- while applauding the overall changes (removal of Hit/Exp, haste breakpoints, etc...) -- are concerned about the death of reforging. It becomes impossible to experiment with a "Mastery/Crit" build or "Max Haste" build, etc.. and we're stuck with whatever drops and the actual spectrum of gear the developers design.

What if Mastery is awesome and the current tier doesn't provide enough -- do we use old gear? What about that strange transition period when we go from Heroics on farm in old-content to Normal modes with new-content -- where you're mixing two tiers of gear together -- will it be possible to get abnormal stat distributions with twice as much gear available? Maybe in BiS gear (at the end of the tier) we only can get 8000 mastery, but for a few weeks while gearing up, we might be able to double that amount with tier blending? I suspect there will be large spikes of outlier damage during this period and unfortunately, this is also time when hotfix buffs/nerfs are applied (soon after a patch.)

The only way I can see this being counteracted is that the relative value between secondary stats becomes marginal. This seems extremely difficult from the balance perspective due to multiplicative scaling but it also seem bad for theorycrafting and player experimentation.

I think the goal is being able to equip gear immediately -- which I agree is great (although I can already get a piece of gear, hearth, reforge in Catus, change gems/enchants/reforges, and get summoned back very quickly), I don't know if the novelty of instant-equip beats the flexibility and customization provided by reforging.

Tinderhoof wrote:I actually hope that isn't the case. Already having to fight Rogues and Monks for Leather plus Rogues, Hunters, Monks, Shaman, Guardians for necks, rings, cloaks having same stats be good for everyone just makes everyone fight over the same pieces and ignore others. I would much rather see some diversity so there is some more even loot distribution.

I think people are faaar too obsessed with getting their BiS item. Unless your secondaries are just massively out of whack (ours are not, I don't really have much experience with other classes).

I just ran myself through catus replacing the rune with ted and doing 3 reforges, 1 with each of the secondaries:

2.8% difference, so pretty much the same. If secondary balance remains similar, having one or more of the "bonus" stats (wf, socket, tertiary) is probably gonna be better than having the "correct" secondaries.